EVGA Offers Existing GeForce GTX 460 Owners "Free Performance Boost"

With few exceptions, our advice has always been to purchase the fastest hardware you can afford right now rather than wait for something faster to come along when you're in need of an upgrade. Why? As any PC hobbyist will tell you, there's always something bigger, faster, and just plain better on the horizon, and once you get stuck playing the 'waiting game,' it's hard to ever pull the trigger.

We bring this up because EVGA has done something unique with its GeForce GTX 460 line. The graphics card maker recently released a new BIOS, which in and of itself isn't anything new, but this updated BIOS pushes the core/shader clockspeeds to 720MHz/1440MHz, up from 675MHz/1350MHz.

That's a generous 7 percent "Free Performance Boost," as EVGA calls its BIOS update, which only further sweetens the pot (EVGA cards are backed by a lifetime warranty, provided you register your card online within 30 days of purchase). Pessimists will point out that the clockspeed increases aren't going to make a huge difference in gaming performance, but hey, videocards boasting a 7 percent boost over reference clocks typically carry a pricing premium, and here EVGA is giving away performance bumps to existing owners. That's just rad.

You can snag the update here, being extra careful to follow EVGA's directions to a T.

i bought the 1gb SC EE edition with a 763 core clock and a 1526 shader clock, how does this effect that card since it has even faster clock speeds. i'm assuming they just unlocked the fan to 100% then...

and by the way, for those complaining about the noise level of the fan on this card, you must have a pretty petite system that gets really hot, my Lian Li scoffs at the heat from this thing, and i have a pretty beefy system with no heat issues at all and it runs relatively silent